Pravinesh Singh.

Illegal activities carried out by unregistered accountants remain one of the biggest challenges for Fiji Institutes of Accountants.

President, Pravinesh Singh says this is one of their long-standing concern and some Fijians have been robbed of their hard-earned money due to illegal operators.

Singh says this is an area with high risk unless relevant bodies have the legal authority to prosecute illegal operators.

“Policing them is difficult for us given the limited resources we have. What we have done is we advertise our members and we continue to publish the names of our CPP members and we also advocate the public to enquire with us on the legitimate members that we have so they don’t get fooled by these illegal operators.”

The FIA President says they will continue to lobby for such provision to be included in their Act to allow them to carry out their duty efficiently while protecting Fijians.

“We will continue to lobby for such changes to that but we would love to have those sort of powers so that the public are not cheated of their hard-earned money.”

The Fiji Institute of Accountants under its current Chartered Accountant Act can only prosecute its members carrying out illegal activities.